As previously stated in preceding articles, a large part of this blog will be analysing the unanswerable question of whether subjectivity or objectivity is more important with regards to the art world, specifically music.
A large part of Ways of Seeing, John Berger’s critical art essay, pertains to the idea of objectivity being one of the most vital parts of analysing art’s true value. Quite often the influence of subjectivity and opinion within the scope of art criticism is deemed as ‘mystification’ by Berger. The question I’ll be tackling arises from this thought; If opinion only leads to mystification, why are critics such a large part of journalism within the music industry?
When you type ‘famous music journalists’ into the Google search engine, the first name you get is Lester Bangs. He was described by Nick Kent, whilst writing for The Guardian, as ‘the world’s greatest rock writer’. A wild personality, living life in the same stead as his heroes Charles Mingus and Jack Kerouac, Bangs’ lifestyle and written pieces have become the stuff of legend. Music journalism is a somewhat strange industry to be ‘legendary’ in. Other parts of the industry seem to be able to have a ‘legendary’ tier of people that can have hyperbolic statements made in their honour. For example, one could say that John Lennon never wrote a bad lyric. This statement would never be able to be presented as anything other than opinion but for the people that uphold this opinion, it will remain true due to the subjective nature of music as an artistic experience. This can not necessarily be said for the scope of music journalism because when writing reviews or even opinion pieces, it is still possible to be objectively wrong. Bangs is not exempt form this.
In his review of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, Bangs remains relatively objective, he often chooses to observe how outsiders perceive Sabbath fans and how that relates to the overall historical disregard of their music from more conservative listeners. However, Bangs’ opinion does still seep through at times. Despite being complimentary of other aspects of the album, he condemns Tommy Iommi’s guitar playing, referring to his playing on the album as ‘tired Claptonisms’.
The problem with this criticism comes with the fact that Paranoid, and its accompanying guitar work, went on to be one of the most influential albums for the meta-genre of Metal. Iommi was rated 25th in Rolling Stone Magazine’s ‘100 Greatest Guitarists’ article that was published in 2015. So, it is clear that Iommi’s guitar playing can be seen as more impressive than Bangs first assumed. This is one of many examples within the scope of music journalism of a subjective opinion being proved as objectively wrong.
If all reviews are written in this style, with pitfalls rooted within the problems of subjectivity, then why are music critics needed for their opinion?
The other side of this argument will appear in the next edition of Subjectivity VS Objectivity on TDOP Blog.
For now, let me know what you think of the issues covered in this article! Singing off on TDOP Blog post #3.
The Doors of Perception Blog 